Life in a Northern Town…

During the course of the last few weeks we’ve come into contact with a few of our creative industry neighbours here Macclesfield. It’s made us all warm and fuzzy about the quality of the people and work going on in our home town. It’s an oft-repeated fact, but around 10 years ago the fine town of Macclesfield was highlighted as ‘a cultural desert’. This seems scarcely credible now, given the emergence of wonderful initiatives such as Treacle Market and of course the Barnaby Festival, which we’ve been proud to work on for two consecutive years in 2012-13. Furthermore, Macclesfield is home to some fantastic independent bars, cafés, shops and other businesses, all of which demonstrate a wonderful level of creative quality in what they do and how they do it.

From a creative industry point of view we’re also spoilt, with agencies of all sizes in and around the town. From the Northern outposts of global groups through to independents of all sizes, a great bunch of freelancers, plus a range of photographers, illustrators and so on, the creative industry is well represented here in “Macc”.

So it’s inevitable, perhaps, that occasionally we all chase the same business, or end up working for the same client. Whilst we’re well used to collaborating with various other organisations for the good of our clients further afield, we’ve noticed, shall we say, a little ‘creative tension’ in meetings and so on.  And guess what, occasionally some ‘North / South’ preconceptions, even in this day and age, as if the entire creative industry disappears once you get past the North bank of the Thames. But that’s a whole other blog…

Back on topic, we’ve been working for a client here in the town that asked us to get involved with another of their creative partners to deliver a project. So we did. And it was such a pleasure to get round the table and see us all work together to collectively delight our client with what we came up with. Call it Maxonian spirit, Northern pragmatism, or just plain old common sense, but when mixed with the creative ability living and working in our town, it made a potentially tricky project a genuine pleasure to work on. Don’t know why we were pleasantly surprised, but we were.

And that’s it, really. No great conclusion or message to impart, only that we’re proud to be based where we are and pleased to see there’s creativity pouring out of the town in the work others do. And long may it continue.

Now, time to sample one of those bars we mentioned earlier…